Kosovo, Littleton boost news Web sites

FrankBarnako

Interest in the Kosovo crisis and the high school shooting at Littleton, Colo. boosted visitor traffic to news Web sites as much as 70 percent last week, according to Media Metrix, an Internet audience measurement service. Among news sites that showed increases were ABCNews.com (+65 percent), AP.org (+70 percent), and Pathfinder.com (+48 percent).

In another report on Web activity, Nielsen/NetRatings said Web users increased their time online last week to an average of two hours 38 minutes. Online music Webcaster Spinner.com was recorded as one of the top advertisers on the Net during the period due to its promotional campaign on Yahoo.com
YHOO, +0.85%
Nielsen/NetRatings listed the most visited Web properties as AOL.com, Yahoo!, MSN, Lycos network
YHOO, +0.85%
and Disney-Infoseek
DIS, +1.43%SEEK, +0.00%
owned Go Network.

Net access package comes with house call

A New York City firm is offering a low-priced package of Net access with a computer and free setup in your home. The Simple Solution LLC package is priced $799 in advance or $19.99 monthly for 48 months. Offering a 300 Mhz PC with Windows 98 installed, Simple Solution president Ike Sutton said "I began to develop the concept nearly a year ago recognizing that there were millions of people like myself who were totally intimidated by the process of buying a computer and getting on the Internet," Sutton explains. "Many companies will sell a computer or provide Internet access, but millions of regular people can't even set it up or figure out how to get on the Net."

Free Internet services in the UK have overtaken paid subscriptions among new PC buyers. The proportion of recent buyers in the UK that are online using free-ISPs (25 percent) is higher than that for paid Internet and online service subscriptions (11 percent each), according to researchers at Inteco. Freeserve, with a 36 percent share of all service providers mentioned, has displaced America Online
aol
with 19 , as the leader among recent PC buyers. AOL held the top spot for the previous five waves of research. The Internet is now second only to games as the most common use of a PC, but it's still not cited as the reason for purchase, Inteco reported.

Teamsters inaugural online

James P. Hoffa and the Teamsters union's new General Executive Board will take the oath of office in Washington, DC Saturday. The event will be carried live in streaming audio and video on the Teamsters Web site so members throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico will be able to share in the event from their homes, the organization announced. Using the Web, Hoffa said,is part of his "fulfilling my commitment to take the union to the members."

Custom music sites delays IPO

Musicmaker.com Inc. has postponed plans for an initial public offering, citing what it said were negotiations for a license with "a major music entertainment company." Musicmaker lets Web users custom-design CDs and, therefore, needs rights agreements with labels. In a statement, Musicmaker.com said the IPO delay was "temporary."

Middlemen to book more hotel Web business

Internet-generated hotel room sales will more than double to $1.1 billion this year, according to travel industry market researcher PhoCusWright. In three years, it's expected the Internet will account for 5.5 percent of all hotel bookings. Currently, almost 80 percent of a hotel's business from the Web comes through its own Internet site, with the balance funneled thorough travel sites such as MSN Expedia and TravelWeb.com. This will shift as hotels devote more resources to the Web, said PhoCusWright president Philip C. Wolf. "We can expect to see a shift toward these `middlemen' as more leisure travelers book online," added Lorraine Sileo, a vice president of the research firm. The growth of intermediaries will lead to more comparison shopping and price sensitivity on the part of consumers, she said. Frank Barnako is a reporter for CBS MarketWatch. He has owned shares in America Online since April 1995.

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